Final Floor Plan

aimless07July 16, 2014

After coming all the drama we have had over the past year, we have finalized our floor plan. It's the bank draft so sorry about all the measurements and busy-ness of it.

We came to the realization that we could not afford the 2,388 sq ft plan we had. So we hired a designer to reduce our square footage, and we are down to 2,130 and could not be happier as we originally wanting around 2,000-2,100 sq foot. My husband and I really feel like the house still has the same feel as the original floor plan which is what I worried about.

I am so excited to have a usable back porch, an actual laundry room, and a huge master bathroom. These are all the things our old house didn't have :)

Looks really nice! Love the privacy you have for the master. Looks like nice closets throughout and comfortable room proportions. Only question I have is if you need your dryer on the outside wall for venting?

Good question about washer/dryer. I don't know to be honest. My husband is a police officer and he is working normal hours right now. But when he is on midnight shift, he needs to be able to sleep when I am at home, so the isolation of it was very planned.

I think it's best if it is and you could easily just flop it to the outside wall there in that same space as you have it drawn. My hubby is also a police officer and I get exactly what you are saying. :) We actually designed our bedroom bath and closet so you could get back in to the bath and closet without going through the bedroom. So easy with working opposite shifts. :). Good to design a home for the way you live.

for the record, that isn't a very friendly ADA bath... it has a 90* turn to get into it (and a lot of hallway corners from any other bedroom in the house. Is it mainly to be used by someone from the main house?)

The closets are barely usable as walkins at that width. You' actually get more storage from less square footage from a reach in.

The ADA bath isn't. Nor is any of the rest of the home, including the supposed ADA ramp from the garage. And the master bath has a lot of wasted space and an awkward layout. There's not enough room around the tub to clean it,

The dining area is crowded by the awkward kitchen layout and can't really add more seating easily with leaves if you have more guests. The kitchen lahout is beyond awkward though. It's unsafe and unwieldy as pictured.

You can't get a mattress or furniture into the master bedroom, and if you could, it's too big for the bed alone, and not big enough or proportioned correctly for a sitting area.

The computer nook bedroom complex is extremely unwieldly. Neither bedroom works well as that, or as an ADA friendly bedroom to match up to the desired ADA bath.

Someone tried to shrink a larger plan down without paying attention to proper proportions. And then tried to compensate by throwing a bunch of inappropriate detailing into the mix to distract from the lack of function.

Too much traffic is being funneled through your kitchen: People will have to pass through the kitchen to get to the dining area, to the laundry room, and to come/go from the garage. I'd switch the kitchen to the far left side and put the dining room in the middle location.

I'd flip the washer/dryer to the exterior wall. It's better if the dryer can vent directly to the outside. This would also allow you to have the laundry sink on the same wall as the W/D, which would be a money-saver on plumbing. The plumbing is strung literally from one end of the house to the other with no regard for economy at all; this portion of your bill will be expensive.

I would definitely add windows to the master bedroom. Windows on three sides would be a wonderful luxury.

I don't like the arrangement in the master bath. You have so much wasted space in the middle of the room, yet the tub looks crammed into a little spot. The space is there, but it could be arranged better.

I agree about the walk-in closets, and that whole area is definitely not ADA friendly.

At a minimum, you would have to delete the foyer closet to make that hall wider and easier to turn into the bathroom. (And since you don't have a separate powder room for guests and they will have to enter the bedroom "wing" anyway, you might consider putting hooks in that wide hallway for coats.)

And as for as the computer nook, it's claustrophobic and adds to the whole cramped feel. Could someone pass by a person sitting in a chair at the computer? Yikes! You just cannot squeeze everything into that amount of square footage, so I think your best bet would be to turn the reading nook into a computer center.

And since both walk-in closets are so small, I would delete the one behind the hall bath and add that square footage to the bathroom. Then, I would put a reach-in closet as a sound buffer between the bath and bedroom.

I don't remember your situation, and why you want an ADA compliant bath. And will one or both bedrooms be occupied on a daily basis? Because if you need an ADA compliant bath, won't you need at least closet that is easier to get into?

And unless you are absolutely sure that you won't ever want to seat more than four people for dinner, I would redo the whole kitchen and dining area. Put the kitchen on the exterior side wall. There's a reason why "L-shaped" kitchens with islands are popular. :)

I do believe that you could make the above changes to the bath and bedrooms if you just take one foot of linear space from your master bedroom and one from your closet.

Also, if your husband works shifts, I would highly considering being able to enter the bathroom from your little bedroom vestibule. We spend time at a friend's lake house that has this arrangement and I love it. (In fact, you can enter the guest room, private guest bath, and private guess closet from the private vestibule. It's a fabulous arrangement, imo. Naturally, the door into the vestibule LOCKS. :) )